Did YOU Taste a Cigarette Lately?
RICH, J. C.
Did YOU Taste a Cigarette Lately? By J. C. Rich Just as I was going through my limbering up excercises on my trusty typewriter, winding up V with the Md ule of the quick brawn fox and the jggtfM...
...Consequently, when fifteen correspondents denounce William L. White's Report on the Rueeiane, 1 can't very well spring to his defense with an air of "I was there, Charlie" authority...
...They won't believe us and that's the end of the advertising game...
...nMn* 1,0 nhnoiY for the advertising agencies," «J*!,arde be*an to see the light...
...He had been in London, he had traveled through the manufacturing regions of the United States, and he had written about our human expendable* in the Philippines...
...Wonderful...
...Hildegsrde, the vixen, was needling me...
...Beeeuee If the dear, goofy public once "j*** that it makes no nover mind what pack of coffin they uy their money down for, they'll never believe that Shredded Repe la what the doctor ordered for them or that · Dromedary is something they have to walk a mile for...
...They're smoking any brand they can get...
...Th* trick might b* worth trying in Pennsylvania for all that I know, even though Pennsylvania haa it* sources of natural gas...
...snd advertising master minds, including you, ?»»th*art...
...Mighty Sad Losing a Fine Tmuthto...
...Th* Cheliabinsk and Stalingrad tractor plant* war* designed in Detroit...
...Will you have a Lucky...
...Don't Joe go biting the nest that feeds you...
...It's a "jOttrery that bode» Ul for all newspapers, radio com-Ma...
...Hildegarde looked at mo with thst gate which is a cross between wonder and doubt...
...rVe smoking any brand and all brands...
...Did th* Ruaaiana themselves provide the generators for Colonel Hugh Cooper's Dniaperstroy dam...
...wonder whether a shot of aspirin will help and doubt whether that asylum for hangovers will do the trick...
...Hildegarde Waney-Rappaport asked, cupidity lighting her face...
...I<H mom ii 1 can't mooch a cigarette for your somewhere...
...I know the standard argument that Russia waa under the tsars for a long time, and couldn't be expected to catch up to the west in technology and basic inventiveness in a mere two decades of revolution and five-year-planning...
...Hand me a Cheapside...
...You sure got it bad," she said...
...After all ? done .or her, wining and dining her and giving her ¦* best Nylons of his life, what d'ye think ahe went isi done...
...While I nm on the subject of Bill White's book, let mo point out that «x-Moecow correspondent William Lawrence of the New fork Timet ref med to sign th* gang-Up denunciation...
...Do you know you may bare" to go out soon to make an honest ''ring for a change...
...H* should be honored for having rafu*ed to Join the fifteen in their a** of a totalitarian technique...
...No, ma doriin' Miss Rappaport, they won't believe that Sweet Sumacs wont irritate the throat and that Broomcorn Bests'hit the taste none...
...ihr filched his last pack of Camelbacks from right umier his pillow...
...Green had gone off to war about as much as brawn, purple or heliotrope...
...Putting LeSueur and Dick Moore together, I can only conclude that Bill Whit* must be right when he infers that the Stalinist industrial machin* would have been unequal to she taak of beating Hitler If it hadn't been for the Ingenuity and th* products of the free west, particularly th* free United States...
...I therefore tamed to my dream girl and said, "Hildegarde, are na holding out on me...
...I Imbiry mumbley-umbely bumbely, Jiabely-umbely-jumbely...
...With righteous anger flooding out from hi* adrenalin glands, BUI Whit* decided to writ* a book that would counter the work* of those Russophiles who hsd proclaimed the proper uniform of an American or an Englishman to bo a hair-shirt He was probably amased to discover that practically all of Manhattan'* reviewer* prefer hair shirts to comfortable linen...
...I ain't got those either...
...Hildegarde gave me a sidelong glance full of passion ud well deserved disgust...
...A cigarette, you ken...
...Laugh you may, my butterfly, but summer is on [j^wana...
...Do take ¦ barky...
...The machinery was stamped with the name* of th* cities of it* origin: Cincinnati, Bridge-* port, and so on, Reading Larry's pages, I at once thought of an experience I had in 1941, when I was working for Fortune Magazine on a story about the statua of Bridgeport, Conn., defense production...
...Hildegarde asked, "a Camel or Old Gold...
...I dunno, handsome...
...That's, what it says in your ad right here...
...You know what we do with ueokc rustlers in these parts, pardner...
...Some research genius had •""covered that women smokers go for a white package "ore than for a green one, and so the green package **nt to the- execution squad...
...I thought a tear trickled down Hildegarde'* glorioui (at...
...Recommended kr ? doctor and his beautiful wife no less...
...A «saratie...
...Where do they get them...
...Well, you know me and my S. R. (Sales Resistance, wa mug...
...He knew that the Anglo-American contribution to victory was fully as great as the Russian contribution: the products of western inventiveness and Ingenuity are "expendable," too—and, a* BUI White, says, you could los* Stalingrad in on* of th* devastated area* of London...
...aho asked...
...The pity of it all...
...Ask anyone from General Electric or Weatlnghou...
...Do you know thither we are drifting...
...The lino Is a block Inner...
...Mile Mulraney Rappaport refused to be stampeded...
...They're discovering that ail ?***· taste about the seen* after the first puff...
...I'm just a sucker for a good, intelligent ad like Toms for the Tummy and Crumbs for the Crummy, ? who was I to go snooty on Cheapside...
...Do you know the bleak, stark 'uture facing the advertising business...
...Tbt radio was going full blast with a commercial jtiefc I spotted as my own...
...Well, does YOUR cigarette taste different lately...
...by the manufacturers of Razoredge pipe tobacco, tat bast flue-cured alfalfa in the world...
...You like its white wrapper so...
...The motivation that accounts for the tone of Bill White's is obvious: Bill was sick and tired of seeing the British and the American contribution* to victory pooh-poohed by our Stalinoid "intellectual*" as "chicken-dung war" when compared to the war effort of the Russians...
...I'm not one of those persnickety snifflers who insist taty can detect a John Rankin in a carload of goats...
...If* worse than that...
...Okay, i.abe, any other brand...
...I gnashed my tooth and buried my head in the paper...
...Everywhere on freight car siding* he saw American machinery that ? wa* being evacuated from the front-line districts to Siberia...
...When he was trying to reach Moscow from a northern port Larry traveled circuitous miles through the area between the frmt and the Urals...
...Larry loves the Russian people, and I once heard him dismiss the Anglo-American bombing of Germany as "chicken-dung war" in comparison with th* infantry battles on the Russian front...
...The Gang-Up on Bill White By John Chamberlain 1HAVE never been in Russia...
...But she ignored me and pretended to a reading a thriller in the latest Real True Romance: Tat cheap little tramp," she remarked...
...Look, my fine feathered vulture," I cried...
...Shud-d-up," I cried and ktrkd the latest Directory of Directors at it, but it imH stop it from platting "Lucky Break Green has mm oft* to war...
...It was one of the accounts she handled and I had a iget to ask her...
...Can John Hersey, Quentin Reynolds and the rest of th* protestors deny th* plain import of Bill White'* thesis...
...BUI L«wr*nc* doesn't agro* with *ome of th* thing* in ffaperf on th* Rueeiane, but h* decided that it ws.n't th* business of mm profaaaional reporter to Join with other* in · blanket denunciation of th* work of * collesgu...
...Do you »hat this means...
...And you won't settle for any other brand...
...Hanging is too good for them," I agreed, "but have m got a Cheapside...
...I could have sworn that was a picture of a doctor in tka »d, nailing up his shingle and saying to his loving ttft: "From now on it's Cheapside cigarettes for me...
...Want me to call up for a padded •? for you...
...The cheap little tramp," she continued...
...But all that Bill White said was that Communist totalitarianism hadn't managed to make Russian production efficient, and that it was American truck* and jeeps that gave th* Red Army the mobility with which to catch th* "disengaging" Nszi...
...Strictly an advertising stunt from the old hokum bucket...
...Take Larry LeSueur'« Twelve Month* That Changed the World, for example...
...Well, in Albert Rhys William's recent book on Soviet life I discover that ft waa an American from th* middle west who taught Soviet avgronomtats how to breed a hardy variety of wheat Th* Russians boast of gasifying coal in the seams...
...People try to make out a case for Soviet science...
...Den't yon shuddup me, Sir Raleigh," Hildegarde Mid, "or I won't lot yon snips in my ash tray no more...
...T» mr a smoke is a smoke even if it is spiked with Utakia (and l-take-her-a), flushed with Apple Honey, handed with Sumatran hemp and tamped down with twfei.us upholstery moss...
...What's going to happen to us if cigarette shortage keeps up...
...But I wonder if John Hersey, Quentin Reynolds, Edgar Snow, Ella Winter, and the others who gsnged Bill White hsve read certain other book* on Russia, books by correspondents who sre basically friendly to the Soviet Union yet who tell substantially the same story that White ha* to tell...
...Yet Larry LeSueur inferentially tells us thst Russian production was built on imported American machine tools...
...None of your dirty French keiimetidos," she said...
...Do yon know what the dear public is doing...
...M.S.L.F.T," I cried...
...I said «heapside," I insisted...
...By J. C. Rich Just as I was going through my limbering up excercises on my trusty typewriter, winding up V with the Md ule of the quick brawn fox and the jggtfM blende, who should slither Into my office in kt%xm Advertising Compiny but Hildegarde Mul -ntej tappayort 'It reus aimo without, coupons attached, boney put, Hare you got a butt...
...She iaid, No," I guessed...
...She was tMng me the business about the green going off to "•r...
...And he trusted her so...
...Sold to Black Market...
...What disturbs me in th* gang-up on Bill Whit* is th* fact that American correspondents and reviewers show very little faith in their own culture, their own civilization, their own nation, their own power...
...Wait, don't rash...
...and if the Russians today hav* •n automobil* industry it is because people like Walter Reuther went to Gorki to teach muzhiks the art of die-making...
...But whatever th* value of underground gasification of coal, the fact remain* that th* idea wa* pioneered by a Briton...
...Looking through the order books of Dick Moore, a manufacturer of fancy machine ¦ tools, I noticed that Moscow order* had kept him in business throughout the early and mid-1930's, when Americans weren't buying jigs and dies and presses...
...Yon need something to atop that raving...
Vol. 28 • April 1945 • No. 15
